A SPECTRE is haunting workers—the rise of artificial intelligence (AI). The fear is that smart computer programs will eliminate millions of jobs, condemning a generation to minimum-wage drudgery or enforced idleness. Never mind the robots, fear the software. The Economist
Tech companies are facing a huge hiring shortfall. The DOL puts it at a half million tech job vacancies, and all of those open positions are causing real problems in lost revenue, slower product development, and existing employee burnout, not to mention headaches for HR pros in talent acquisition. IBM is taking some creative steps to fill that vast employee void by prioritizing capabilities over credentials, investing in robust training programs, and looking at people with two-year degrees, calling them the “new collar” workforce. One reason? Even if someone earns a four-year degree in, say, cybersecurity, technology is changing so fast that the degree will be obsolete by the time the candidate’s profile goes live on LinkedIn. Workforce
On Friday, after months of speculation this was coming down the pike, the NLRB is proposing a change in its joint-employer standard laid out in the now-infamous Browning-Ferris standard. It has to do with who, exactly, employs people who work at a franchise, and the way it stands now, it allowed for a couple of high-profile lawsuits in which employees of a franchise sued the franchiser, not just the franchisee that actually employs them, for things like labor violations. It opened a can of worms for the franchise industry as a whole, setting the stage to redefine the industry as it exists today. This change would put that genie back in the bottle for now. The public has 60 days to comment before the board takes action on this change, and we can safely bet the franchise industry is going to be loud and vocal about it. NLRB
There’s a contingent of overzealous HR pros out there right now deflated by the news that those elaborate team-building exercises they’ve been planning for the company retreat really do very little to build teams, other than get everyone on the same page being annoyed at HR. This, from a new book dropping next month: Lessons From Mars: How One Global Company Cracked the Code of High Performance Collaboration and Teamwork, by Carlos Valdes-Dapena. He worked at Mars for 17 years and studied collaboration, looking into what made teams tick. Turns out it’s less tackling a ropes course or mud run together and more getting clear on when and why collaboration makes the team greater than the sum of its individual members. Harvard Business Review
It’s likely you have a corporate disaster plan in place, including policies for how essential functions like payroll will get done if the worst happens, what to do if a storm strikes in the middle of a workday and everyone is trapped at the office, and other scenarios. One thing you might not have considered is the Waffle House Index. Yes, that Waffle House. It’s really and literally how FEMA assesses the severity of a disaster. If a storm rips through an area and the local Waffle House is closed, it’s code red for FEMA, all hands on deck. If the Waffle House is open but serving a limited menu, it’s labeled a yellow situation, bad but not catastrophic. If the Waffle House is open, it’s all good, FEMA can keep going and look for areas that are more severely hit by the storm. It’s part of Waffle House’s mission to get their restaurants open ASAP after a storm to feed residents and first responders. They even have tricked-out RVs they take to ravaged areas to get those restaurants open. So if your local Waffle House is closed after Florence makes her way through, you’ll know to activate your own disaster plan. USA Today
